Curses
by Angel Weasel-Woman
Summary: Matt drops a bombshell of a recovered memory, and Joe's not sure how to take it. K for language.


WARNING: Enough cursing to make a sailor blush, but it's only semi-plot important ^^;

* * *

Joe sat on the tiny couch, flipping idly though a book he'd read at least fifty times by now as his boyfriend lounged, legs in his lap, concentrating on his video game. Matt was glowering at the screen, clicking the controller angrily, wondering what had happened to his mad skillz from when he was thirteen.

"Motherfucker," the blonde growled. "How does this bitch know Flip?"

Joe shrugged, like he knew what Matt was even talking about. For the longest time under his father's oppressive rule, he practically didn't even know what video games _were_. Upon finding out, the younger man had made it his mission to show his lover the "golden age" of nineties RPGs. Of course, that tended to mean pointing out which characters sucked and lingering on pointless in-game card battles for hours instead of advancing the plot.

"Can you just imagine if we'd done that in the Digital World?" Matt had laughed one day over the bouncy tune that tended to get stuck in Joe's head for days. "'We have to go defeat Piedmon!' 'No, fuck that, I'm playing Triple Triad for twenty hours.'"

But this day, with the warm spring air flowing through the closed screen door, Matt suddenly paused his game, looked to his distracted boyfriend, and stated, "When I was in fourth grade, I cussed once and I got told on. The teacher yelled at me in front of the class for ten minutes about it."

Joe blinked and set his book in his lap, looking over and giving Matt the same incredulous look he always did when his boyfriend dropped some long-repressed memory out of nowhere.

"What." It wasn't even a question by now. Just a statement akin to "Oh my God."

"Yeah," Matt continued, picking up his controller, looking to his screen. He wouldn't have been surprised if he was told that his OTP of the tall blonde lady and the little cat-boy was some odd form of therapeutic release. "I mean, I just said something like 'damn' or something fuckin' weak like that, and my friend's friend – not the _hot_ cheerleader, but the bitchy one. You remember me telling you about her right? - she just went crazy about it. I practically felt like a demon spawn or whatever, and that's why I stopped cussing. At least until I met you."

Joe would have responded with, "It's either I cussed or cut myself." Instead, the words that came out were, "Holy Christ, your entire school-era _life_ was shitty."

"W-what?" Matt sputtered with laughter, dropping his controller. He would have feared for his character's lives, but he'd recently stolen the best armor in the game prior to the dungeon he was in, and was receiving 0 damage. "What does _that_ mean?"

"Seriously, every time you tell me something from before we hooked up, it's like another crappy nail in the shitty coffin that was your life." Joe found a bookmark, a paperclip that had fallen on the floor, and set the paperback aside. "'My mom molested me', 'my parents divorced', 'Tai cheated on me with Cody even though we were only e-dating', 'some bitch teacher from when I was ten called me the Devil'. How have you not just killed yourself, hm? It's like when Megan McCarthy was bitching about Sandra's shitty cat in that movie."

Matt would have been offended, but he was laughing too hard. Well, hacking up a tarred lung from laughter, at least.

"I'm being serious right now," Joe stressed, grinning. "All that bullshit you called a life before we fucked the first time? ("Well, second," Matt snickered and Joe smacked him with the book.) Didn't happen. I decree, right here and now, your life began when you were twenty. You woke up one day, decided you liked my dick, and here we are. No more of that crappy..." Joe waved his hand, trying to find an appropriate word. "Crap you call memories. That stuff never happened."

"Oh yeah?" Matt took a deep breath to calm himself and grabbed his controller. The blonde woman on the screen screeched her familiar war cry of "Fol!" and Matt shifted, kicking his feet up to Joe's shoulders to tickle the man's ears in playful revenge. "If my life started at twenty, that means you're dating an eight year old, you know. You pedophile, you."

"Eh, at least you're used to it," Joe grinned, grabbing his book.

The controller bounced off his head with a "Flame Launcher!"


End file.
